Haifa International Film Festival: “Guard” Director Won’t Be There…

Significant victory for the cultural boycott of Israel! John Michael McDonagh pulls out of his planned appearance at the Haifa International Film Festival!

John Michael McDonagh has contacted the Cultural Boycott Officer of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC), Raymond Deane to say that he has pulled out of attending the screening of his film “The Guard” at the Haifa International Film Festival “in view of the political situation”.

Although his film, the “Guard” will still be screened, such victories are significant and illustrative of how appearing at Israeli cultural events is becoming increasingly unattractive to artists, musicians, filmmakers and more. The BDS campaign is growing in numbers and strength.

Efforts were made to inform John Michael McDonagh about the boycott. The PACBI and the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (ISPC) [1], along with “Don’t Play Apartheid Israel” (DPAI) [2], and the Haifa International Film Festival: A Call to Boycott Facebook page [3] and many other efforts by concerned humanitarians, helped to persuade John Michael McDonagh that “the political situation” of apartheid is not something anyone should endorse.

Israel commits crime of apartheid: "Inhumane acts of a character similar to other crimes against humanity "committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime."